Thinking of Helen Kelly

Helen and Marty at Dunreith’s 50th Birthday Party.

April’s a big month for birthdays on Dunreith’s side of the family.

A really big month.

We’re talking close to a dozen uncles, aunts, in-laws and parents who came into this world one April or another.

My late father-in-law Marty’s birthday was on the 4th.

Our nephew Jacob is on the 18th.

Shaun, Dunreith’s brother was born on April 25.

And today would have been my mother-in-law Helen’s 81st birthday, or, as she would probably have said, the beginning of her 82nd year.

The invasive and oppressive meddling of mother-in-laws convinced that their child’s spouse is not good enough for his or her daughter has been the subject of movies-see Monster in Law with Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez who vie for Michael Vartan’s attention-and derisive terms like “smother-in-law.”

Helen did none of that.

Aidan once called her the perfect grandmother, and she was certainly the same as Dunreith’s mother.

She supported, love and nurtured our family and me in so many ways.

The most basic for me was her giving birth to and raising Dunreith to be her own person, a strong, self-respecting and highly intelligent woman who had been taught to believe that her voice mattered.

Helen and Marty gave us the space to develop our own lives, but she was always there whenever we needed help.

To this day, I’m not sure if we would have ever gotten out of our apartment in Easthampton had she not spent 12-hour day after 12-hour day sifting through the mountain of clothes, books and furniture we had accumulated, but never quite discarded when I moved out there from Eastern Massachusetts.

Helen’s respectful nature, prodigious work ethic and tremendous sense of occasion converged during the preparations for our wedding at Look Park.

She let us make all the arrangements, and stayed out until we asked for her help with a little less than three days to go.

To this day I have never seen one person accomplish more in such a short time as Helen did.

Nothing was going to stop her from making her only daughter’s day as beautiful as possible.

This included singing the tune of “Here Comes the Bride” as she and Marty walked Dunreith down the aisle in her bright red sleeveless dress.

Yet as meaningful as these public experiences were, I’ll also remember the private moments we shared.

I’ll think of the morning phone calls where we’d chat about what we were both planning to do after chanting “Num-ber One” to each other a few times to signal our Mutual Appreciation Society.

I’ll remember her refined elegance, the joy in her voice when she talked during the last year of her life about spending time with Lucy-”Just delightful,” she would say, enunciating every word-and the constant curiosity and sense of wonder she brought to everything she did.

Helen and Lucy.

I’ll think of how she cupped her hand and used her strong fingers to extract and savor every morsel of the lobster we ate in Rockport.

I’ll appreciate how she never forgot what it was like to grow up in a cold water flat, and, because of that, never ceased giving without expectation to those she loved or appreciating what she had made of herself.

I’ll smile when I think of her weekly adventures in hair cutting with Angel, how she’d try anything he suggested at least once.

I’ll think about how much her friends loved her.

On days like this, and others, the memories of these times sneak up from my heart to my throat in a grief comes in waves, reminding me again of the permanence of irretrievable loss.

Helen was a treasure, and I’m grateful beyond what I can express for all that I had the privilege to experience with her, and remember.

Happy Birthday, Helen.

I love and miss you very much.

Helen and Dunreith in the summer of 2011.

Big Papi Brings Down The House at Fenway (First Published at www.vivelohoy.com)

In 1997 I attended a conference in New Haven, Connecticut about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Holocaust.

South African Supreme Court Justice Albie Sachs was one of the speakers.

The longtime freedom could not see out of one of his eyes and lost one of his arms in a 1988 bombing, but the losses did not stop him from speaking with passion about then-President Nelson Mandela.

Although Sachs cautioned against making Mandela the entirety of the anti-apartheid movement, he did say that the man known as “Madiba” had the closest relationship with the people he led of anyone he had ever met.

I thought of Sachs’ words yesterday after watching and re-watching David “Big Papi” Ortiz’s heartfelt speech at Fenway Park yesterday.

It was a memorable day for many reasons.

For Ortiz, it marked his first game after returning from injury. Neil Diamond made a surprise appearance to lead and join the sellout crowd in an enthusiastic rendition of “Sweet Caroline.”

But, of course, the major reason was because it was the first game since Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing just yards from the finish line that killed three people and wounded 170 others.

Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the second suspect, had been apprehended after a daylong manhunt that ended in a boat outside a Watertown residence.

The impact of the blow and the threat that it represented remained in the air, but so did the people’s response.

The team had distributed posters “B Strong”, the red letter inside a navy blue background, that fans in the bleachers waved as Diamond sang. “Boston Strong = Wicked Strong” said one homemade sign. “Cape Cod Raised, Boston Strong” read another.

Some fans held up the American flag they had brought to the game. Others draped themselves in it.

This came after Ortiz’s speech. (Those who do not want to hear profanity should not watch the video.)

As always, direct and to the point, Big Papi added another page to his legend that has made him one of Boston’s most venerated sporting icons in the decade since he arrived from the Minnesota Twins.

“This jersey that we wear today, it doesn’t say Red Sox,” he declared. “It says Boston.”

“This is our f-ing city, and nobody going to dictate our freedom” he continued after thanking Gov. Deval Patrick, Mayor Tom Menino and the Boston Police Department for their work the past week.

“Stay strong,” Ortiz concluded before walking off the field, his right fist clenched and upraised.

The crowd exploded.

That Ortiz later delivered a sixth-inning single that drove in leadoff hitter Jacoby Ellsbury in helping the team pull out a dramatic 4-3 victory over the Kansas City Royals only cemented the day’s perfection.

Now the longest serving player on the Red Sox, Ortiz has embodied the team’s ascent to unparalleled heights as well as its subsequent challenges.

He hit a home run in the heartbreaking 2003 Game 7 loss to the Yankees that at the time prompted the following anguished cry from my brother Mike in California:

“The Holocaust. Rwanda. The Yankees over the Red Sox. Must evil triumph over good?”

The next year, though, more than any other player, Ortiz helped break the curse of the Babe.

In case you’ve forgotten, look back at that now legendary playoff run.

Feel the surge of the walkoff home run against California that lifted the Sox into the ALCS against their archrivals.

Remember the despair of the seemingly insurmountable 3-0 hole the team dug for itself-a deficit from which no team had ever returned and that had been capped by a 19-8 route that resembled batting practice for the Bombers.

Touch the hope that flared up so slightly after the 12th inning blast that ended Game 4, and that grew stronger after he knocked in the winning single in Game 5 after fouling off pitch after pitch.

We all know what happened after that, and what has happened since.

This includes Ortiz’s being named one of about 100 players who were on a list of players who tested positive for banned substances, according to The New York Times.

Ortiz denied that he had ever taken steroids, saying that the positive test may have been due to the supplements he had been taking at the time, but could not name.

The revelation and apparent absence of a coherent explanation has done nothing to dim Ortiz’s popularity among the members of Red Sox Nation. As Celtics fans did with Robert Parish’s off-court troubles or Larry Bird’s inattention to his daughter from his first marriage, they love him for the boon he has bought to their town and the freespirited and generous way in which he has lived.

That love only deepened yesterday with his FCC-approved speech, which has already sparked t-shirts.

Ortiz may not make the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, but, like Mandela did in South Africa, he demonstrated yet again an uncanny ability to make true fans’ most basic wishes on the field and to articulate their most visceral emotions in the face of the deadly attack that shook, but ultimately strengthened, the city’s resolve.

Robert Pirsig and The Richness of Chicago

Tunisian labor leader Kemal Saad speaks at the UNITEHERE office in Chicago on Friday, April 19.

Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motocycle Maintenance was an important book for me in high school, even if I’m not entirely sure I made my way through it.

You have to remember that this was a period when dear friend Hisao Kushi and I would spend hours exclaiming over the profundity of expressions on Lipton tea bags that read, “Sometimes the best thing to get off your chest is your chin.”

Compared to that, Pirsig’s assertion that “We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world” was, if not quite as deep as Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, pretty darn close.

In this Princess Bride clip, Vizzini disparages the Greek philosophers’ intelligence.

I thought of Pirsig’s statement on Friday.

While much of the world’s attention, and our family’s heart, has been in Boston, I was reminded anew of the richness here in Chicago.

The reminders took several forms.

Dunreith and I responded to an invitation from uber-connector Danny Postel, in town from Denver for the weekend, and attended a presentation by a delegation of Tunisian union leaders at the UNITEHERE office.

For those who do not know, union activism is seen to have played a critical role in the ouster of longtime President President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 after 28 days of protest.

The revolution was the first social upheaval in what has come to be called the Arab Spring.

Saad gave a wide-ranging talk in which he talked about the change in union membership since the overthrow of Ben Ali (it’s up, especially among young people), the union structure (there aren’t leaders per se, he said, but older people do have more experience, the right to strike (it’s there, but to be used as a last resort), and the role of women (he said more than 50 percent of the Tunisian Congress are women, even though several other sources put the number at close to one quarter).

Saad’s college Hebib Hegeb also spoke, talking about the hope he and others share that the international community will invest in the country as it is sorely needed.

Per capita income close to doubled between 2000 and 2010, according to the United Nations, but still was at $4,200 in the latter year.

Both men’s comments were warmly received, and the diverse crowd stood to applaud them for their work and accomplishments at the session’s end.

Regardless of what one thinks about union activities, it was indeed an expansive opportunity to hear from people who participated so directly in the shaping of their nation’s history.

From the presentation we stopped by Kramer’s health food store to pick up a tasty Kombucha and catch up with G.D. Jenkins, an award-winning raw foodist.

I stopped by Kramer’s regularly when I worked at The Chicago Reporter. Since moving to Hoy a couple of years ago, I don’t get there much.

This lack of contact made it that much more pleasant to see G.D. again. He had just given a workshop last night and said that his wife is still biking actively.

Trilogy Kombuchas in hand, Dunreith and I made our way over to the Loews Theater on Michigan Ave. for the Latino Film Festival.

We caught the end of Delusions of Grandeur, Iris Alamarz’s homage to San Francisco that she said in a post-film question and answer session was in the tradition of Woody Allen’s Manhattan.

Delusions centers on the quest of Lucy, a 22-year-old medicated grunge girl who sets out for the city to escape her suburban home and to find her mother who abandoned her 10 years earlier.

Once in the city, she shares an apartment with Illusion, a transgendered woman with a generous spirit who succeeds in finding, but not holding onto, love.

Meanwhile, struggling flower seller Rocio discovers that her husband is a gay cross dresser-a knowledge that comes with predictably unhappy conclusions.

Yet, through a combination of drugs, reflection and Illusion’s wisdom, as Shakespeare would say, “All’s well that’s end well.”

Or, in the word of Alamarz, for whom the film marked a debut, you have to love yourself before you can love others.

She certainly loves San Francisco.

The movie is full of lingering shots of the Mission neighborhood where my brother Mike and his family live. This includes images of Dolores Park, the busy streets full of shops, a large blue mural that serves as a backdrop for Illusion’s distinctive walk and a painful spill, and repeated pictures of the classic Roxie Theater.

The enthusiastic audience was markedly smaller than the crowd that assembled for Las Cosas Como Son, or “Things As They Are,” the feature presentation.

Also by a first time director, Chilean Fernando Lavenderos, the film tells the story of Jeronimo, a taciturn thirtysomething landlord with a thick beard who lives a hermetically sealed existence fixing his family’s house in Santiago.

His world is disrupted when he rents a room to Sanna, an idealistic if naive Norwegian woman who teaches acting to children who live in a dangerous neighborhood.

Jeronimo spies on his new tenant, even as a relationship starts to build between them.

But progress between the budding couple is stalled when Sanna brings her work home in an unexpected way.

In the question and answer session after the film, Lavanderos explained that he wanted Jeronimo to represent the closed and lonely nature of many Chilean people, especially among the upper classes.

It was getting late for us, and we were ready to head back to Evanston.

But not before we took with us a grain of sand that showed us Chicago in some, but not nearly all, of its multi-lingual glory.

Marathon Memories and Today’s Horror

Many of my favorite memories ever involve the Boston Marathon.

As a kid growing up in Brookline, I’d walk with my mother to Coolidge Corner and Mile 24.

I thrilled to see the top runners-they weren’t majority Kenyan in the 70s and early 80s-zip by, their strides free and easy as if out for a brisk jog.

I admired the grit of the wheelchair races who would zoom through, just two miles from the finish line.

Seeing Boston legend Johnny Kelly finish his 50th marathon remains a treasured experience, as does being a witness to the grit and sheer determination of the sea of runners who streamed by in the minutes and hours after the leaders, their strides shortened, their shoulders hunched and their eyes squinting with the pain caused by what they were asking, no demanding that their bodies do.

When I was in seventh grade, Joe Santino, our Science teacher, ran Boston for the first time. Bearded and stocky, with curly hair and thick thighs, he went out too hard and paid the price on Boston’s fabled Heartbreak Hill.

Bu he did finish, and in a very respectable time of 3:25.

I ran nearly every day of seventh grade and, through Mr. Santino’s example, hatched a goal of someday running Boston myself.

It took me a decade and three training efforts, but I did it.

I ran the race in honor of Dr. D’Angelo, my best friend’s father who had died of chronic leukemia just two week earlier.

I wore a t-shirt with an image of Dr. D. next to Hank Williams and had told Mrs. D., his widow, that I might pass by Star Market on the corner of Beacon and Tappn Streets around 3:00 p.m.

Like Mr. Santino, I had been too enthusiastic and started walking and running at 20 miles.

Nevertheless, it was almost exactly 3:00 p.m. when I got to Star Market.

Mrs. D’Angelo was there, standing on a wall agains the overcast sky. She gave me a silent and gentle waved as I passed.

I almost started crying.

I saw my best friend’s brother Gus in the crowd as I rounded the corner and headed for the finish line.

While I could not remember not running when I got there, I vividly remember the feeling of crossing the line and knowing that I had completed a goal that had seemed utterly unattainable for a full 10 years.

Eleven years later, I did it again.

This time, I ran in honor of Paul Tamburello, my fourth grade teacher, mentor and friend who had contracted a non-fatal version of ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

My brother Mike jumped out of the crowd at Mile 22 on Commonwealth Ave. and guided me him the final four miles.

As opposed to the first time, I had trained more and paced myself better.

This combination allowed me to sprint the final 50 yards and reach the finish line, hearing Mike’s cheering voice as I thrust my fist in the air and started yelling.

In addition to my own personal feelings of triumph and vindication, the Marathon has always meant so much to me because it’s been a shared event. Crowds three, four and five deep line the course from the very first step in Hopkinon to the final stride in Copley Square, cheering, celebrating and enjoying the festive atmosphere.

It’s a deep part of what makes us Bostonians, a fundamental part of the fabric of the city and the entire New England region.

It’s one of the best parts of us, too, the piece that accepts champions from Kenya and Ethiopia and Germany as openly as from other parts of the United States, (Boston Billy Rodgers always had a special place in the city’s heart.), that rooted vigorously for women in wheelchairs as the male able bodied runners, that understands, in the word of three-time runnerup Juma Ikangaa on Marathon Day, everyone is a winner.

Which is why today’s fatal explosions and the gruesome carnage with accompanying heartwrenching details about children and adults killed and maimed is are so horribly disturbing.

I talked to Mom tonight.

She said that she was watching the race on television and even been feeling a little badly that she hadn’t again gone to Coolidge Corner, even though the crowds can be too much.

Then the explosions happened.

Mom said she’s never heard the sound of so many ambulances blaring as they dashed, one by one, by her house on the way to nearby hospitals.

I know that we are now experiencing what has already come to so many other communities.

I also understand that the death toll could have been a lot worse.

But that unfortunate solidarity and grim knowledge of what could have been are scarce comfort to those who have lost loved ones today or for a region that is again forced to confront the lengths to which some twisted individuals will go to destroy live and defile what previously had been sacred ground.

Whoever did this will not succeed, and today marks a profoundly painful shattering of what has been in place and strengthened for generations.

Remembering Marty Kelly

During the past week, much public attention has been focused on the deaths of world-famous people.

We’ve had the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Roger Ebert’s passing the day after he announced he was taking a “leave of presence” and Margaret Thatcher’s death.

For members in our family, last week was a different occasion.
It included the day Marty Kelly, my father-in-law, would have turned 81.

He didn’t make it, of course.

He’s not been here for the past three years since he passed in late March of 2010.

It’s funny how we notice the absence of people we’ve loved so much. Holidays and birthdays can bring forward the bittersweet experience of feeling them strongly for a day, an hour, or even a moment or two.

The sweetness comes in again remembering the times we shared with them, the jokes they told, the habits that only we knew, the way that we always knew there was someone older when we were around them.

Marty gave me a lot.

His gifts were both direct and indirect.

For the former, he gave me the daughter he had sired, helped raise and loved fiercely and unconditionally.

I remember going with Dunreith to the Frank Lloyd Wright-style home he shared with Helen in Wilbraham shortly after we got engaged.

We sat together on the couch, looked at a bin of family photos and childhood report cards and started to slowly make public that which we had pledged to each other in our Easthampton apartment.

“You’re two people with an idea, and you’re doing something about it,” Marty told us.
He was right.

During that visit he also encouraged me, as he did throughout the 12 years that we knew each other, in my relationship with Aidan.

“He needs someone to throw the ball to him,” Marty said about his oldest grandson, who often fell asleep on his stomach when Marty babysit for him while Dunreith was taking night classes at Smith College.

Marty’s helping me move into that new role in my life was part of the one of the most significant gifts Helen and he both gave us throughout our marriage: the time and space to build a family in our own.

They never pressured us to spend time with them and always let us know they appreciated the experiences we shared.

There were plenty of them.

We ate lobsters and sat on the beach near Kezar Lake, had many warm occasions and visits.

They spent all day helping us pack the U-Haul to get out of town when we moved from Easthampton to Evanston for me to attend journalism school.

Sometimes, memories of Marty come to me unannounced and unprecipitated, and stay a while.

I’ll see him sitting in his chair in the living room at the Wilbraham House, nattily dressed as always, his yellow turtleneck and a green sweater fitting well on his lean and lanky frame, a Dewar’s with ice in his right hand It’s shortly before a meal. He’s surrounded by his family. looking with bemused wonder at what he had helped create.

I remember how much Marty loved the Friday golf game that he’d engineer, tinkering endlessly with his #2 pencil until he got just the right combination. He’d jigger the lineups just enough that he would usually end up with Tommy Henshon, a tough, blue-eyed developer with a shock of white hair. Tommy would get after Marty, but more often than not would sink the winning putt.

I remember listening to Helen, Marty and Dunreith, no matter where they were, lingering over coffee for hours at the breakfast table, recounting the latest goings on in Western Massachusetts and the intricate interconnections and relationships between the characters I never had, and likely never would, meet.

I remember one of the last times Aidan golfed with him. Already in the grips of Alzheimer’s, Marty was starting to wander away from the boy he had helped raise into a young man.

“Over here, Par,” Aidan said in a gesture of exquisite tenderness and maturity, at once saving his grandfather from the indignity of having his deteriorating mind exposed while at the same time allowing himself to be taught by his grandfather in the activity that gave him more joy than almost anything else in the world.

I remember the pictures and the stories that Uncle Dick tells of growing up in Pittsfield with the five Kellys, when they were young and life was ahead of them.

I imagine the P.E. teacher in seventh grade who Marty said looked out for him and helped steer away from what could have been a destructive path.

After he died, I wrote that I’ll think about Marty sometimes and be grateful and smile.

That happens, and it’s different than I imagined.

Some of the details are a little blurry, the clarity of feeling a bit clouded

But the core remains, leavened by the time that has passed, marinated in the appreciation that comes from understanding the work we must do in each generation and humbled by the knowledge that we are, slowly, surely, inexorably, entering the same stage as those whom we once looked up to, revered and considered impossibly old.

I miss you, Marty.

Love,

Jeff

Ed Burke and Forrest Gump’s Surprising Connection

Remember Forrest Gump,the storytelling, suit-wearing, veteran, runner, and entrepreneur who intersected with every major event in United States history from 1954 to 1982?

I was watching a clip from the film on YouTube the other day when it hit me: Ed Burke is Chicago’s version of Gump.

I want to be crystal clear here.

The movie character is portrayed by Tom Hanks as naive and slow-witted.

The city’s longest-serving alderman ever is neither.

But Burke is like the Southerner in that he has been witness to, and part of shaping, many of the city’s key events since the late 60s.

And, in that way, looking at his career provides a helpful lense into understanding Chicago’s evolution and growth during this time.

For those who haven’t seen it in a while (or ever), in the movie, Gump attends the University of Alabama, where he plays for legendary coach Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant, sees he witnesses George Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door, is named an All-American football player, and meets President John F. Kennedy. He also serves in Vietnam, speaks at an anti-war rally, invests in Apple, opens a successful shrimping company, unintentionally coins the phrase “Sh-t Happens”, and marries his childhood sweetheart, who dies of AIDS (This is a highly distilled summary.).

Not convinced?

Here are 10 ways in which Burke has embodied and interacted with Chicago milestones and hallmarks of the past half-century.

Product of the Machine

The Irish-American politician has been called one of the last remaining links to the heyday of Chicago machine politics, Burke got his father’s committeeman and aldermanic seat after his father’s death. He’s been there ever since. In fact, Burke has not only served longer than both Daleys combined, he’s been in office since before many of his current colleagues were born.

Coming into office during upheaval of the 60s

Burke first became a committeeman in 1968, the year of the tumultuous Democratic Convention that brought Richard J. Daley unwanted international attention and that revealed deep divisions within the party that helped thwart Hubert Humphrey’s long-held dream of becoming president. Burke received a deferment from Vietnam before joining the reserves.

Young Turk during first Daley and Byrne years

In the waning years of the elder Daley’s regime, Burke made his name as a Young Turk. Along with later convicted felon Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, Burke expressed impatience and sought reform. Manuel Galvan has written about how in 1972, Burke joined Vrdolyak in his “coffee rebellion,” a move that wrestled a share of power from Mayor Richard J. Daley’s floor leader, Aid. Thomas Keane (31st). Galvan also noted that Burke was tagged as a member of an “evil cabal” by then commissioner of consumer affairs Jane M. Byrne because he allegedly “greased” the way for taxi fare increases. However, her attacks ended after she became mayor in 1979 and needed Burke as a council ally, he said.

Protagonist in the Council Wars

Burke continued his close connection to Vrdolyak as one of the leaders of the “Vrdolyak 29” that reflexively opposed nearly every measure Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor, sought to advance. Burke didn’t stop there, though. He sued unsuccessfully in Cook County Circuit court to have Washington removed from office.

Lawyer, Police, Private Eye and Author

Like Gump, Burke has had a varied set of jobs outside of his aldermanic position. He worked for several years as a policeman before entering the political arena and operates a lucrative law firm and has done so for many years. He has also, along with Thomas Gorman, written a book that pays tribute to every slain officer on the Chicago Police Department from 1853 to 2006. The Sun-Times pointed out last year that Burke is a licensed private detective who is trained and authorized to carry a semiautomatic weapon

The War Chest

Since 1999 Burke has raised more money that any politician in the city. This includes Richard M. Daley and uber-fundraiser Rahm Emanuel. To be fair, he had more than a decade head start over Emanuel. Still the total of more than $20 million raised and having $8 million in hand is even more impressive when one considers that he’s only faced a single opponent for office since 1971.

Clout beyond clout

Burke has run the all-important Finance Committee on the council for the past three decades, since the beginning of Washington’s first term. Beyond that, his wife Anne Marie is a Supreme Court justice. Is there anything more Chicago than the ultimate clout couple?

Tinged, but not burned by scandal

This is another classic element of Chicago politics that we saw throughout the tenure of both Daleys.
Although those close to Burke have faced indictment, he has remained untouched. Matt O’Connor of the Tribune wrote about the ghost payrolling on the Finance Committee that led to Marie D’Amico’s conviction.

Burke’s use of a security detail that has been paid for by taxpayer money for the past 30 years is another source of controversy.

Racial diversity in his family a subject of controversy

In 1996, Burke and his wife became foster partners to an African-American boy named Baby T. Perhaps fitting his role as an occasional lightning rod and a sign that Chicago remains a deeply divided city, this prompted a lawsuit by the mother who wanted to have custody of her child. In a racially tinged court fight that received plenty of media attention, the Illinois Supreme Court sided with the Burkes in 2001.

His district’s demographic changes

This is one of the clearest examples of the changes the city has gone through in the 45 years since Burke first joined the council. At that point the district was mostly Eastern European. Now, it’s nearly 90 percent Latino.

But he keeps on winning.

There is no word yet on whether Burke plans to spend three years, as Gump did, running around the country.

My strong guess is that he’ll continue to stay in Chicago.

But even though their activities and mental acuity differ, the way in which the alderman and the fictional character reflect, and contribute to, their eras’ main happenings remains remarkably similar.

I published this post first on http://www.vivelohoy.com.

Are we making progress on gay and lesbian issues?

Progress on social issues, like beauty in the stereotypical phrase, is in the eye of the beholder.

One has only to think of Malcolm X’s response, when asked in early 1964 about whether there had been progress in race relations in the United States.

Speaking for the first time after his 90-day ban following his comments on President Kennedy’s assassination, he responded as follows:

“I will never say that progress is being made. If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out three inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, there’s no progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made, and they haven’t even begun to pull the knife out, let alone heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.”

X’s comments came after the historic March on Washington in August 1963, a gathering President Barack Obama described in his recent inaugural address as being comprised of 250,000 “men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.” (Check out the section beginning at 13:44 to hear this section.)

Many heralded the day and King’s oration as landmark events in American history, but X held a far more skeptical view.

I thought of his words and the question of how to evaluate progress this past week in regards to the rights of, and attitudes toward, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans in the arenas of sport and politics.

Let’s look at sports first.

We had EJ Johnson, the son of hoops legend Magic Johnson, coming out as gay and walking down the street with his boyfriend in Southern California.

In a lengthy interview with TMZ, Johnson talked both about how much he and his wife Cookie backed their son’s decision-I’m behind him one million percent, he declared-and how they have helped him deal with some of the negative comments that have been posted on African-American blogs.

The interview went viral, and Kobe Bryant was among many who expressed his support for Magic and the Johnson family. It’s easy for critics to dismiss many of the gestures Bryant makes, and it is true that he’s had his own evolution from a homophobic slur user in 2011 to a denouncer of those same terms being directed at him by a Twitter user in February.

Also in basketball, Rutgers coach Mike Rice was summarily fired, one day after a video surfaced on ESPN’s Outside the Lines showing him abusing his players by, among many things throwing basketballs at them, pushing them and hurling homophobic epithets at them.

The next day, the school’s athletic director Tim Pernetti resigned as a result of his having taken what the university deemed was insufficient punitive action in response to having seen the tape several months earlier.

The stand by the university that homophobia was among the unacceptable actions sparked no protest.

Finally, in football, Former Baltimore Ravens linebacker and special teams standout Brendon Ayanbadejo told the Baltimore Sun that as many as four NFL players could break a barrier by coming out publicly at the same time.

The Huffington Post noted that Ayanbadejo t has been in the news during the past year at least as much for his staunch support of marriage equality and gay rights as for his on-field performance.

Thus far, no NFL player has come out publicly during his career.

This all occurs at a time when gay marriage ballots passed in three states in November, when the state of Illinois is considering a similar measure, when the issue came before the Supreme Court in a potentially landmark case and when Sen. Mark Kirk became the second Republican senator to endorse gay marriage.

They occur comes months after President Obama referred in his inaugural address as our gay brothers and sisters.

At the same time, as heartening as these developments may be, it is unlikely that Malcolm X would call them progress.

Just as the dismantling of legal apartheid during the modern civil rights movement revealed the next and deeper challenge of gaining full financial equality, so, too, does the lived reality for far too many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered fall short of the lofty promises articulated in our founding documents.

Consider the number of states that ban gay marriage or define the institution as the union of a man and a woman (Hint: it’s a lot higher than the nine states that have gone in the other direction.).

Think of how, for many young people, homophobic statements are still an acceptable form of hatred.

And think about the thousands of people who are still subject to hate crimes based on their sexual orientation.

In short, think of the lived reality that presents a series of taunts, stresses, discrimination and even physical danger solely because of people’s sexual orientation.

At the same, last week’s events are not meaningless.

To paraphrase Malcolm X, the knife may not be all the way out.

But many people have acknowledged that it’s there and it appears to be moving in the right direction.

We will watch with interest.